Iran proves it can still inflict damage despite waves of US attacks

Leaked US intelligence report concluded Iran retained 70% of missiles and launchers after 38-day spring campaign

Iran and the US have been trading blows for six consecutive nights and there are no shortage of signs that the renewed fighting will worsen further. Tehran and Washington remain far apart diplomatically , and though the US retains a significant military overmatch, Iran has more than enough capability to inflict damage.

Friday’s developments are a case in point. A wave of US attacks , with missiles launched from jets, drones and warships, targeted Iranian ports and the south of the country, collapsing a tower at Chabahar, on the Gulf of Oman, and highways and bridges into the strait of Hormuz port of Bandar Abbas, perhaps in an effort to cut it off.

Iran responded in familiar fashion by attacking US allies : Qatar, Bahrain and most significantly Kuwait, where a power and desalination plant was hit, causing a fire and an undetermined amount of damage. Desalination is critical for water supply – and human life – in the arid Gulf, providing an estimated 90% of Kuwait’s needs.

The US had claimed, repeatedly, that its intense 38-day spring bombing campaign with Israel had destroyed or decimated Iran’s military. This week, with surprising precision, Donald Trump told Fox News that Iran’s “weapons are down 91%”, but US intelligence reports and the scale of Iranian attacks tell a different story.

Leaked US intelligence assessments concluded in May that Iran had regained access to 30 out of 33 missile launch sites along the strait of Hormuz and perhaps 70% of its overall prewar missile stockpile and launchers. It is easier to block the entrance to an Iranian underground missile base with rubble from explosions than entirely disable it, but that makes a clear-up during the late spring ceasefire perfectly possible.

Two oil tankers that were sailing along the southern route of the strait of Hormuz, near Oman, were struck by missiles on Monday, according to the UK’s Maritime Trade Organisation, killing one sailor and wounding eight. A third tanker was struck further east, in the Gulf of Oman, 45 miles north-west of Qalhat, illustrating the range of Iranian air power against tankers that are hard to defend unless a warship is close.

The results were predictable: the US reimposed its own blockade in the Gulf of Oman, the number of daily transits through Hormuz dropped to three by Thursday, the fewest since May, and the price of Brent crude oil , which ended last week at $75.50, rose to $82. Iran has to retain only a limited threat to close the strait. To emphasise the point, another tanker was reported hit on Friday, though there were no reports of casualties.

“Now that the plaster has been ripped off, the costs for escalation for both sides are so much lower than before February 28,” said Michael Carpenter, a former Biden administration national security official, now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, but the White House has “no clear or well thought-through strategy for how to get out of this”.

A frustrated US is exploring how to bend Iran to its will, after Trump described the country’s leaders as “scum” and “sick people” at this month’s Nato summit, though it is not obvious how that can be done without a substantial ground campaign, for which the US is not prepared for, nor has the appetite for. The 2,200 marines in the USS Boxer amphibious group are also involved in enforcing the US blockade.

Military escalation was considered at a White House Situation Room meeting on Tuesday, followed by leaks that the options considered included bombing another deep-lying nuclear site at Pickaxe Mountain – which would have no effect on the now critical Hormuz dynamic – or a seizure of the strategic Kharg Island, through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports would flow if there was no US blockade.

It is perfectly possible for the US to capture Kharg or any other small location on the ground, but the challenge would be holding on, as it would be inevitably targeted by Iranian missiles and drones. Meanwhile, continued US bombing will further reduce stockpiles of hard-to-make air defence interceptors, depleted by a half, and expensive missiles, down by a quarter to a third, based on estimates from the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank .

Trump has also threatened to escalate further, bombing “all their power plants” perhaps as soon as next week. Such a degree of escalation would invite international condemnation as it would be widely considered a war crime – as well risk a dangerous Iranian retaliation in the Gulf, as underlined by Friday’s desalination plant strike in Kuwait. It is also rhetoric from which he backed down from in April.

Iran’s regime has shown it can endure. Its coherence was underlined by the organisation of the week-long national funeral procession of Ali Khamenei , points out Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a lecturer at Cambridge University. She fears a sharp military escalation, though “my feeling is it will be shorter” than in the spring, because both sides are depleted, resulting in a not dissimilar outcome to now.

It is a reminder that it easier to start wars with unrealistic goals than to end them. “Neither can deliver a knockout blow at an acceptable price,” Farmanfarmaian said.